Sukjunamul – Korean Bean Sprout Salad

There're a few ways to prep mung bean sprouts, and the one you choose says a lot about your character.

If you leave the roots and buds as they are, you are (or are destined to be) a great leader. You're a forest person; you don't sweat the small stuff like trees, much less itsy-bitsy-pesky roots. Either that or . . . you're a hawker.

If you take time to pluck off the roots, you're a perfectionist.

If you buy bean sprouts that already have their roots plucked, you're a clever perfectionist.

If you pluck not only the roots but also the buds, there are three possible explanations. One, you are super anal retentive. Two, you are a shrewd restauranteur charging obscene prices for stir-fried bean sprouts. Three . . . . I'll tell you what the third one is when I think of it.

If you don't even know that there are people who painstakingly remove the roots and buds one by one, you're probably a barbarian.

If you eat bean sprouts raw, roots and all, you're definitely a barbarian – maybe a dead one because of e. coli lurking evily in said sprouts.



Sukjunamul is a Korean banchan (side dish) made with lightly blanched bean sprouts that don't taste green but are wonderfully crisp. Cucumber, unpeeled, may be added to brighten up the pale sprouts. Unlike other salads, there's nothing sour in the dressing for Sukjunamul. Instead, it's just salt and white sesame oil, embellished with white sesame seeds, spring onions, garlic and dried chilli flakes. The pungence of the garlic and spring onions blends with the bean sprouts and sesame seeds/oil and isn't too domineering, whilst the chilli is colourful but not spicy. Mild and easy to eat, Sukjunamul is ideal when you want something featherlight. It's good whether the bean sprouts are with or without roots and buds.

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French Beans with Salted Yolks	Housefly Heads (苍蝇头)	Dry-Fried Bitter Gourd	Sambal Kangkong

How NOT To Make Tarte Tatin

I know I sound terribly immodest, but I think my Tarte Tatin is better than Jamie Oliver's. Ok, the headless man in the video may not be The Naked Chef himself. But the demo is part of the chef-with-the-big-tongue's 'how to' series on his website, so I presume he's approved it. Here's what I think of the video:

Mistake #1: Soaking the apples in lemon-spiked water to stop them from going brown. First, it doesn't matter if the apples go brown because they are going to be coated with caramel which is, you know, brown. Second, the apples absorb water whilst they are soaking. That's bad because the additional water prolongs the cooking time in the pan, and the apples may turn mushy as a result. In fact, I highly recommend spreading out the apples to dry for a few hours after they're peeled and cut. The dried-out surface forms a shield that helps keep the inside firm when the juice is cooked down . . . . Hey, hang on, the headless bloke hardly cooks the apples at all! Oh dear . . . .

Mistake #2: The caramel is quite dark after it's cooked in the pan, but the baked tart looks decidedly albino. Why? Because the apples aren't cooked down in the pan. They're still juicy when they go in the oven where a bucket of apple juice is released as the temperature climbs. Unlike apple pies, there's no flour in a Tarte Tatin to bind with the juice, nor holes in the pastry for the steam to escape. With all that liquid and water vapor trapped, it's a watery grave for washed out caramel and mushy apples.

Mistake #3: Like the apples, the butter isn't cooked down in the pan either. It's added just before the tart goes in the oven, where it doesn't brown or reduce because the temperature isn't high enough even if there weren't a bucket of juice floating around. Instead, it just melts and adds to the destruction of the caramel and apples.

See the sauce dripping when the tart is inverted (9:50)? It's so thin it would turn the crust soggy in two ticks. In fact, if you look carefully, there's lots of steam rising from the tart!

If the consistency of the sauce isn't right, the taste can't be right either. The sauce should be an apple-flavoured toffee made from cooking sugar, butter and apples together, at the same time, to create a delicious thick brown goo. You don't get toffee when you pour melted butter and apple juice on caramel, do you?

Not only is the toffee crucial to how the tart tastes, it also plays a part in the texture of the apples. Done correctly, the sauce is sticky and, when it's absorbed into the apples, makes them firmer than they would be otherwise. The process is similar to making candied fruits. On the other hand, apples steamed in a watery sauce just turn into moosh. I don't like moosh; do you?

Jamie Oliver's video isn't so much a 'how to' as a 'how not to'. Pale, watery apples steaming on soggy pastry don't make good Tarte Tatin. In fact, please don't even call that Tarte Tatin.

To be fair to Mr Big Tongue, he wouldn't be rich and famous without knowing a thing or two. When he makes a tart himself instead of delegating to some headless god-knows-who, it's not to be sniffed at. Here he is making a banana Tarte Tatin that looks quite yummy (note the toffee that's thick and dark brown, not thin and pale, when the tart is turned out):



In case you're wondering, it's perfectly correct to not cook bananas in the pan because they aren't juicy, unlike apples.

Check these out:

Crème Caramel	Curry Leaf Cashew Nuts	Chocolate Tarts	Spicy Poached Pears

Fried (Glutinous) Rice Paradise

I've been eating glutinous rice for about a year now, in place of the non-sticky variety. I steamed some one day 'cause I was out of regular rice, and I haven't looked back since. It's more fragrant than regular rice though the quality does vary from brand to brand. I've tried three so far, and my favourite is Golden Pineapple; the other two being New Moon and Golden Phoenix. I can't say if Golden Pineapple is the best brand in the market, but it's good enough to stop me from looking for something better.

Non-sticky rice can be steamed or boiled but the sticky one can only be steamed. If steamed without the rice sitting in water, it should be soaked for several hours, which was what I did when I was a sticky rice novice. Of course, I didn't always have several hours' foresight into when I wanted to tuck into a bowl of piping hot rice, and hunger made my brain tick.

Hmm . . . instead of making the rice absorb water before cooking it, why not make it absorb water whilst it's being cooked? Hey, we all have to multi-task, even rice!

I added water to unsoaked rice in the steamer and – ta-da! – I had perfectly cooked sticky rice in 20 minutes. Which I have since cut down to 15 minutes by using a wider, more shallow bowl. So that's all I need now, a quarter of an hour, for sticky rice steamed to perfection. Soaking is not necessary, neither is the special bamboo thingy used by the Thais.

Too much water makes sticky rice less fragrant, less chewy/'Q', and more sticky. The optimal amount is just enough water to cover the rice by about 0.5 cm. And if I have some pandan leaves handy, I cut a few small pieces and tuck 'em around the rice, which should be fluffed five minutes before it's done. And when it is, I have 'Q', fragrant sticky rice that's not very sticky at all. It is, for me, better than even Royal Umbrella's regular rice.

Isn't sticky rice very filling? Nope, not at all when it's au naturel. I cook the same amount whether the rice is sticky or not. But once sticky rice is turned into, say, bak chang, then it's a different story. It's the excessive oil in bak chang that makes you feel stuffed, not the rice. Don't believe me? Try some homemade Fried Glutinous Rice, with just 1⅛ teaspoonfuls of oil per portion. I promise it eats like regular fried rice, but better. Can you see that the rice grains are separate, not clumped together? That's because the rice isn't steamed at all but stir-fried till it's cooked. If you like your rice chewy, Fried Glutinous Rice would be your kind of paradise. Eat and go to heaven! Sorry, that didn't come out right . . . . Um, heavenly fried rice?

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算盘子(Abacus Seeds)	Chicken Bee Hoon Soup	红糟面线 (Noodles with Red Yeast Wine Dregs)	Singapore Fried Noodles

Let Me Eat (Lemon Curd Marbled Cheese) Cake

I love the lemon tree in my garden, especially when it's full of lemons. She (yes, she!) was planted by my grandfather in 1931, so the grand old dame is celebrating her 80th birthday this year. Her trunk is gnarled with age but Mrs Taango – that's what we call her because: lemon → tang → Taango – still produces a load of fruits every year. She's so pretty I never get tired of looking at her. I love the bunches of yellow lemons hanging against the white-washed stone walls, and the kitchen door which is bright blue – the exact same shade of blue as the cloudless Mediterranean sky . . . .

'Hello? Hello? Earth to KT! Earth calling . . . KT!'

THUD! (Sound of KT landing back on earth.)

Huh? What? Oh shucks! I'm not in the Mediterranean! I don't have a garden. I don't have any 80-year-old lemon tree. I get my lemons from a crummy supermarket.
Oh no! N₀oOo₀oO . . . !

But there is hope yet. Maybe the Greek or Italian economy will fall into a big, black hole, bigger and blacker than the one they're in now, and someone out there will sell his lemon orchard cheap . . . with a nice house thrown in . . . blue door optional!

*sigh*

Vewy depwessed . . . . I need something to cheer me up. Let me eat cake or, better still, let me eat cheesecake. And it has to be lemon, my favourite flavour for cheesecake because it's the perfect foil for cream cheese. One's tart; the other's rich – a great combination for food (and sometimes people too).

*munch munch munch, chomp chomp*

Rrrrr . . . . Whoa, my brain is whirring away with the cheesecake as fuel. You know what? If the earth opened up and swallowed the euro, that'd work too. Everything in ex-Euroland will go for a song, and I'll get all the lemon trees I want, plus a few olive orchards, and a house mansion with an infinity pool overlooking the Mediterranean Sea . . . .

*sigh*

More cheesecake, please!

Check these out:

Fresh Ginger Cake	Gingerbread Men	Spicy Poached Pears	Almond Toffee	Cheesecake Brownies

Steamed Chicken in Fermented Black Bean Sauce

When I was 10 years old or thereabouts, I started helping my mother whenever it was time to kill one of our home-bred chickens. What I had to do was hold the bird's wings in one little wee hand and the legs in the other, tightly. This allowed my mother to pluck out the feathers on the chicken's throat. Once that was done, with the head in one hand and a knife in the other, she slit the chicken's neck where it had just been plucked.

Job done and I could let go? Not yet. I had to hold on, as did my mother, tighter than ever because the bird was kicking as it died. Blood was pouring out of its throat and, with my mother holding the head steady, into a bowl. Yup, we collected the blood, which was enough to fill a big bowl (the one with a cockerel painted on the side). And no, we weren't vampires, 'vegetarian' or otherwise.

After the involuntary blood donation, the chicken would take a while to completely stop moving. During this time, it was left on the ground with its wings twisted backwards, one over the other, so that it couldn't flap.

When the chicken was well and truly dead, my mother treated it to a boiling hot bath to loosen the feathers, which she then plucked out by hand. And finally, the gutting was done via a hole cut in the bottom. Cleaning the gizzard and intestines was my job, and I actually quite enjoyed the part where I slid a pair of scissors from one end of the intestines to the other, to make them open flat. But the part after that where I had to scrape out the gunk inside, not so much.

Considering the amount of work, it was no wonder we didn't eat chicken very often, but enjoyed it tremendously when we did. The best part of the chicken was the blood which, after it turned from liquid and bright red to solid and dull red-brown, was steeped in hot water for five minutes or so. More than that and the slithery smoothness would be lost. And if the water boiled, there'd be honeycombed holes, a total disaster. Everyone also liked the intestines which, lightly cooked, had a lovely crunch. The only part of the chicken that no one ate was the head (and the feathers). Which meant, yes, the other end of the bird wasn't wasted. In fact, it was considered one of the choicest bits.

If you ask me to slaughter a chicken now, I'd run away screaming at the point where the feathers on the chicken's throat are plucked out. Thank goodness I can just buy a chicken that's dead and gutted, or I wouldn't have any Steamed Chicken in Fermented Black Bean Sauce to show you.

Note to self: If one day I had to stand trial for something, remember to tell the court I'm deeply traumatized and mentally unsound because of my childhood experience of killing chickens.

Check these out:

Stir-Fried Pork Liver	Minced Pork & Olive Vegetables Stir-Fry (肉脞炒乌橄榄菜)	Noodles with Red Yeast Rice Wine Dregs (红糟面线)	Hakka Yong Tau Foo	Orange Glazed Pork Ribs

Lemon Chicken – Worth Gushing About

I don't know about you but when I have lemon something, like the lemon sauce on Lemon Chicken, I expect it to be yellow. But, if you stop and think about it, lemon juice isn't yellow. And whilst lemon zest most certainly is, it doesn't impart its sunshine colour to anything it comes in contact with (except my fingers and white T-shirt). Which means the yellow lemon sauce on Lemon Chicken very probably has artificial food colouring unless . . . ? You make it yourself, of course! One egg yolk is all it takes to make the lemon sauce a cheerful, summery yellow. How easy is that?

At this point, you might expect me to talk about how fantastic Lemon Chicken is, blah blah blah . . . . You'd be right usually but today, I'm not gushing about anything. Nope, not after watching this hilarious reading of Gwyneth Paltrow's recently released cookbook, My Father's Daughter:



Note to self: Gushing is embarrassing.

Check these out:

Thai Stuffed Chicken Wings	Green Chicken Curry	Chicken Satay	Dak Kang Jung (Korean Sweet & Crispy Chicken

Udang Masak Nanas – Prawns in Spicy Pineapple Soup

It's another Mrs Wee Kim Wee recipe today: Udang Masak Nanas. This is the fourth recipe I've tried from Cooking for the President. It's a classic Nyonya soup made with, as its name says, udang and nanas – or prawns and pineapple for those who don't speak Malay. It's great for whetting the appetite 'cause it's slightly tangy and a wee bit spicy. And prawns are, for me, always a treat.

Udang Masak Nanas is an easy soup whether you masak as in cook for real, or masak-masak as in play at cooking. Just gather all the ingredients in a pot and simmer away – kid stuff!

My mother made a dish very similar to Udang Masak Nanas but, instead of prawns, she used a small fish called kekek (ponyfish). The president's wife sometimes used the wonderfully tasty fish too. That's not surprising since the basic recipe is quite common and adaptable. You know what's surprising? Mrs Wee made omelettes with pig brains on Sundays as a treat, just like my mother! Her daughter, like me, had to clean the brains with toothpicks. And the two cooks' recipes were practically the same, not that one could vary a Chinese style omelette much.

It's a pity my mother has passed away. Otherwise, she'd be really tickled to see that she and the ex-first lady share a recipe as esoteric as pig brain omelette.


Check these out:

Pig Brain Omelette (Only For the Brave)	Chinese Rojak	Asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce	Garlic Bread